The latest on food monopoly trends is that 2015′s merger and acquisition deals added up to $516.5 billion — 54.7 per cent more than in 2014, according to a report in Merger Sector Trend Report. This trend is hard on farmers and rural communities, according to a recent study by senior academic watchdogs of food monopolies — William Heffernan, Mary…
Author: Wayne Roberts
Wayne Roberts is a Canadian food policy analyst and writer, widely respected for his role as the manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council, a citizen body of 30 food activists and experts that is widely recognized for its innovative approach to food security, from 2000-2010.
As a leading member of the City of Toronto’s Environmental Task Force, he helped develop a number of official plans for the city, including the Environmental Plan and Food Charter, adopted by Toronto City Council in 2000 and 2001 respectively. Many ideas and projects of the TFPC are featured in Roberts’ book The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food (2008).
Since 1989, Roberts has written a weekly column for Toronto’s NOW Magazine, generally on themes that link social justice, public health and green economics.
In 2002, he received the Canadian Environment Award for his contributions to sustainable living. NOW Magazine named Roberts one of Toronto’s leading visionaries of the past 20 years. In 2008, he received the Canadian Eco-Hero Award presented by Planet in Focus. In 2011, he received the University of Toronto Arbor Award for his role in establishing food studies as a field of study at University of Toronto.
Roberts earned a Ph.D. in social and economic history from the University of Toronto in 1978, and has written seven books, including Get A Life! (1995), a manual on green economics, and Real Food For A Change (1999), which promotes a food system based on the four ingredients of health, joy, justice and nature.
Roberts chaired the influential and Toronto-based Coalition for a Green Economy for 15 years. He has also served on the Board of the U.S.-based Community Food Security Coalition and Food Secure Canada. He is on the board of Green Enterprise Toronto, an organization of local eco-businesses that’s associated with the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies across North America. He has been invited to speak around the world on strategies that combine food security, community empowerment, environmental improvement, social equity and job creation.
Prior to his involvement with environmental issues, Roberts worked for two decades in the fields of community organizing, university teaching, media, labour education, industrial relations and union administration.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD: Vote Food Democracy
If I say “food” and ask you to say the first word that comes into your mind, I expect it might be agriculture, or maybe health, or hungry, or yummy, or water, or maybe even diet. But I’ll bet you a dollar to donuts (notwithstanding donuts are probably worth more than dollars now, so I should say donuts to dollars)…
The Milan Pact: Checklist or Mannapesto?
‘Cities are centers of economics, culture, infrastructure, expertise, and they have a strategic role to play on the sustainable food file.’ —Wayne Roberts Field notes from this week It’s still not too late in January to squeak in under the deadline on the theme of the major opportunity created last year, and the major challenge facing us this year. My…
Food Meditations: Taking the Pulse of a New Food Trend
My dad often said he ate enough beans and rice pudding during the 1930s Depression and 1940s World War to last him a lifetime. If I never see them again, it will be too soon, he’d tell anyone thinking of serving them to him. Those habits have carried over until today across North America and Europe, even though there are…
Food Meditations: A Mysterious Object Lesson in Food
I often wonder about the mystery of the modern food movement, at least in the urbanized Global North. Why did it emerge so late in history — so long after the labor movement or women’s movement, for instance? And why do people care so much more about local food than about local cars or clothes or energy? I think the…
Praxis or Paris
‘Only one force can free us from the monopoly over action now held by national governments – our own gumption!’ —Wayne Roberts Field notes from this week Dear Mayor Foodworthy: As everyone knows, there wasn’t much action coming out of the Paris talks on climate change. But a lot happened in terms of traction. Anyone who’s paying attention now knows…
Good Food Puts Carbon Where It Belongs
‘Getting up on the right side of bread in terms of climate change will be the first, most urgent and biggest accomplishment of food policies for cities and countries around the world. —Wayne Roberts Field notes from this week Dear Minister Chewonthis: Alas, this report from the field does not come from Paris, where governments and climate activists met to…
Wayne’s food field notes served up hot!
‘The idea of a national food policy is the best thing to happen to food since slicing your own whole-grain bread.’— Wayne Roberts Field notes from this week We’re in luck. The mood of open government is so buoyant across Canada that we are able to base this field report on my draft correspondence with the new minister-in-waiting of food, Minister Chewonthis.…
Wayne’s Food Policy Field Notes This Week
‘Teaching cooking is a vehicle to teach food literacy.’— BC chef Barbara Finley tells the room. Notes from this week This week, I’m reporting back on the Farm to Cafeteria/Farm to School conference held in Montreal on November 12-14. It was Canada’s first nation-wide Farm to School and was mainly organized by two groups, Farm to Cafeteria based in Vancouver and Equiterre, based…
Trudeau’s government to grab right end of the food stick
If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s instructions to his new Minister of Agriculture are followed, Canada will soon lead the pack of G20 economically powerful countries when it comes to food policy. Among the duties listed in Trudeau’s public mandate letter to Minister Lawrence MacAulay is one to “develop a food policy that promotes healthy living and safe food by putting…